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swered, Amen, with lifting up their hands; and they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord, with their faces to the ground'." He was followed by priests, who translated the precepts into the vernacular tongue :-" Levites, who read in the book of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading 2. 2 99 The day itself was remarkable, as the first of the seventh month, the beginning of the civil year, and the Feast of Trumpets. It was the fitting day for the announcement of a recovery that was yet to animate and awake the world. But "the people wept when they heard the words of the law." Ezra and Nehemiah commanded that they should exhibit the rejoicing of which such a day was worthy.-"They said to them, go your way and eat the fat, and drink the sweet -neither be ye sorry. For this day is holy unto the Lord."

The first influence of the revival of the Scriptures was felt in an extraordinary spirit of sacred activity. Synagogues were extensively built through the land. Religious instruction was vigorously spread. For the first time in the national annals, the books of the Mosaic history and law, interpreted into the popular tongue by either the

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3 Lev. xxv. 9.

The Chaldee was so habitual, that the Book of Ezra, consisting only of ten chapters, is Chaldee from the 8th verse of

priest, or an attendant minister of the synagogue, were regularly read as a portion of the service; and places of prayer for the solitary devotion, so congenial to the habits of the East, were erected on the sides of the roads, and spots made memorable by public events; in which the traveller, or the man of lonely piety, might kneel surrounded by the glorious scenery of hill and valley, with Jerusalem in his horizon, and a still holier and more magnificent Jerusalem before his mind.

It is equally matter of record, that from this period commenced a striking enlargement of the national religious conceptions. The prophecies were more anxiously searched for the promised coming of the Messiah; the immortality of the soul became a more recognized and practical doctrine; and the abhorrence of idolatry was conspicuous and complete. When we recollect the resistless national propensity of earlier times, to plunge into the deepest pollutions of the worship of images; this sudden, total, and permanent change forms one of the most distinguished instances of the power of truth to purify the mind. For the only instrumentality to which we can

the 4th to the 27th of the 7th, with the exception of some verses in the sixth. With the learned Jews, the languages were probably in equal use. But the distinction of the people who "could understand," from those who required an interpreter, shows the prevalence of the Chaldee among the multitude.

assign the change, is the more habitual and public reading of the Scriptures. The chains of the captivity might have partially subdued, or warned, the self-willed spirit of the Jewish idolator; but their effect must have been temporary. Punishments and mercies are soon and equally forgotten by nations. The countless majority of the Hebrews had remained in Chaldæa, neither softened nor warned, and were hourly sinking more and more into the Paganism in which they were finally and for ever absorbed; while the feeble remnant who returned to Palestine, less than fifty thousand out of the redundant population of the twelve tribes, proclaimed in all succeeding ages the abhorrence of idolatry as the characteristic of their nation.

Another change existed in the inferior pomp of their worship. The temple itself was on a diminished scale. But not merely the gold and jewels which once enriched all the instruments and forms of its worship were gone; the captivity had deprived the national worship of loftier treasures than gold or jewels-The ark of the covenant had been burned or carried away in the general ruin by Nebuchadnezzar; the Urim and Thummim, the oracular gems on the high priest's breastplate were irrecoverable; the sacred fire on the altar was extinguished; and the Shekinah appeared no more.

Yet it was declared that the loss of those superb

features of religious celebration should be more than compensated by the increased power and spirituality of religion itself; that the time was approaching, when all emblems must have given way to reality, and that the "glory of the latter house should exceed the glory of the former." The last words of the last prophet of Judah proclaimed the high and animating truth, that during its existence the Messiah should be born; "the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple;"HE, who in himself embodied all the glories of the temple of their fathers, whose breast was the living oracle, on whose brow descended the divine splendour, whose heart was the altar of the Divine fire, whose words were prophecy, and whose blood was a covenant of peace, infinite and eternal.

With Nehemiah, the great names of Jewish government expired; with Malachi the oracle was closed; its uses were at an end with the captivity. As the miraculous gifts of the apostolic church ceased, when the religion was once firmly planted among mankind; so the lessons of prophecy were withdrawn, when the more perfect knowledge of the Scriptures, and the more vigorous discipline of the church, supplied at once the consolation and the lesson. So invariable is the rule of Providence, and so totally distinct from the lavishness and ostentation of power, that marks the vanity of

man.

CHAPTER XXXV.

EZRA.

FROM the dedication of the Temple to the coming of Ezra, nearly fifty-seven years had elapsed; during which the national character had been severely tried by the difficulties of its position. Palestine was in the possession of barbarians, rendered, probably, more hostile to the returned captives, by a mixture with apostate Jews. But the friendship

of the barbarians was to be more fatal than their hostility. As the original corruption of the sons of Seth had been their marriages with the daughters of Cain; the gradual alliances of the Jews with the heathen masters of Palestine threatened rapidly to degrade them into the morals of heathenism. Ezra's strongest declarations were pronounced against this guilty neglect of the Divine command; and, as the most essential step to national safety or Divine favour, he enforced the immediate abandonment of this dangerous affinity. After twelve years of thus sustaining the morals and religion of the people, Nehemiah had come,

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